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How Smart Cities Encourage Citizen Engagement

The extent to which cities will build data collection systems into the infrastructure—or how much we’ll voluntarily gather and share information from our smartphones—has yet to be determined. Here is a survey of what some cities have launched so far.

In a recent article, Mike Clay has an optimistic take on how cities can use data collected from smart phones and other devices to better manage and plan by getting citizens become more involved and interactive: “The culture of being always-on, carrying a smartphone wherever we go, makes real-time reporting and telling stories about a city so much easier, allowing the dream of citizen generated content to become a reality.”

To make the point about the new powers available to the smart city, Clay surveys the efforts of cities around the world in developing data-driven systems.

For instance, the SmartSantander app in the Spanish city of Santander, which provides residents with real time data on road closures, parking, and bus delays using 12,000 sensors installed around the city.